Satellites and spacecraft

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Satellites and spacecraft make several appearances within the alternate timeline of the Falloutuniverse. Some are featured in the backstory of the games, and are mentioned in pre-Great War documents and recordings, but were decommissioned, destroyed, or lost prior to the current date. Others are prominently featured in the plots of the Fallout games, such as in the canceled game Van Buren and the Fallout 3add-onBroken Steel.

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Satellites consist of man-made objects which are propelled into orbit around the Earth. They are used for various purposes, among them communication, surveillance, and even warfare. The three satellites that appear in the Fallout games were exclusively weapons of war, equipped with space-to-ground nuclear missiles. Decades have passed since these satellites were first sent into orbit and they have become derelict, with several functions disabled by collisions with space debris or disuse; their lethality, however, appears to remain unaffected.

The following is based on Van Buren and has not been confirmed by canon sources.

Ballistic Orbital Missile Base 001 was an orbital weapons platform with a capacity for 24 nuclear missiles and designed to be manned by a crew of six astronauts. Two were built by the United States government in 2073 as the ultimate offensive weapons, but were never used in the Great War. B.O.M.B.-002 was knocked out of orbit nearly two centuries after the War, but B.O.M.B.-001, equipped with only eight missiles at the time, was rediscovered sometime prior to 2253 and featured in the plot of Van Buren.

Bradley-Hercules is an orbital weapons platform deployed into space sometime prior to 2077 by the United States military and left dormant. It carried a payload of eight salvos of nuclear missiles potentially capable of targeting any location in the world. By 2277, it had been rediscovered by the Enclave, who controlled through the mobile base crawler at Adams Air Force Base. The satellite had survived relatively unscathed through the centuries, and four missile salvos were successfully used to destroy Liberty Prime during the events of Broken Steel. The remaining salvos were used to destroy the crawler after the defeat of the Enclave by the Brotherhood of Steel, or the Citadel, the Brotherhood's fortress, depending on player action.

Highwater-Trousers is a U.S. orbital weapons platform like Bradley-Hercules which was armed with eight micro-nuclear bombs which were also never used. In Fallout 3, the Talon Company was able to reestablish contact with Highwater Trousers through SatCom Array NW-05a, but the Array's targeting mechanism had fallen into disrepair. Without replacement rotors for the Array, the satellite could not be re-targeted and was locked on the area around the Array tower. When the satellite was activated, the bombs fell harmlessly on the nearby rock formations.

Spacecraft are vehicles capable of flight which can escape the gravitational bounds of a planet. Spacecraft developed on Earth were used to briefly convey astronauts into space or to land on the Moon, but technology had not advanced enough prior to the Great War for space flight to be a common occurrence, or for humans to explore other planets and moons in the Solar System. The United States space program and U.S.-built vehicles are mentioned in detail only in Fallout 3 and the non-canon Van Buren.

Defiance 7 was the space capsule piloted by American astronaut Carl Bell in a historic mission on May 5, 1961. Bell became the first human to reach space, but was subsequently killed as the capsule re-entered Earth's atmosphere and was destroyed.

The Delta IX rocket was a spacecraft model originally commissioned by the United States Space Administration in 2020 for manned missions to the Moon. As tensions increased between the U.S. and China, however, the Delta IX program was usurped by the U.S. military in 2052. The remaining Delta IX rockets were equipped with nuclear payloads, effectively making them intercontinental-capable missiles.

The following is based on Van Buren and has not been confirmed by canon sources.

The Hermes-13 was a rocket intended for the first manned mission to Mars. The looming threat of nuclear war cut the mission before it ever began, however, and Hermes-13 was converted into a shuttle to convey personnel and the necessary activation codes to the B.O.M.B.-001 installation in 2074. This mission was also canceled as resources were diverted from the U.S. space program to other efforts. In 2076 the Enclave seized Bloomfield Space Center, where the vehicle was housed, and intended to use Hermes-13 to evacuate an elite few to another world; this plan also never came to fruition, and the Hermes-13 rocket was abandoned just as the Great War broke out.

Valiant 11 was a Virgo II model Lunar lander built by the United States Space Administration. Valiant 11 successfully landed on the Moon on July 16, 1969, and the astronauts on board became the first humans to walk on a celestial body other than Earth.

Intelligent life from another world has created spacecraft to travel between the stars and inconspicuously survey the Earth. At least three alien vehicles are known of, one being a scout craft piloted by a single alien which crash landed in the Capital Wasteland, and the other two are alien motherships. One is destroyed in a battle with Mothership Zeta.

Recon craft Theta was an extraterrestrial reconnaissance spacecraft used to covertly scout out the Earth for unknown reasons. It crash landed in the Capital Wasteland at some point after the Great War, killing the pilot. The wreckage broadcasted a distress signal which was intercepted by Mothership Zeta in 2277.